Tag Archives: cute hedgehog

One of my colleagues at work (pictured above) ran across a small hedgehog and decided to do a little “show and tell.” We posed with the little fella and then set him free. He’s pretty small, about the size of a melon; I saw one last week, at about midnight when I was driving home from work – the second one was about the size of a basketball.

This Central Asian hedgehog looks exactly like the kind that I had seen in Iraq in years past. I wonder if they are similar to the hedgehogs of Europe. If anyone can recognize if it si the same or not, please leave a comment.

When he is relaxed, his little head and legs stick out of his spines just fine but when he is startled, he rolls up into a little ball and all of his spines stick straight out. They are quite rigid and can penetrate clothing. In these photos, we were handling him with some thick leather gloves.

I have seen these hedgehogs eat snakes, scorpions and all sorts of crickets, grasshoppers and other insects. They are quite beneficial in helping to keep the bug populations down so we welcome them at our work sites.

In this photo, I had just blown a sharp breath on him causing his spines to stick out and his head tucked back inside of his quills. They sure are cute animals. I have some photos of Iraqi hedgehogs, I’ll post those (eventually) when I get back to 2005…

We had caught another hedgehog a few weeks later, you can see his photos here.